by Moshe Ben-Or
His other four were the ones to worry about. Shimon and Aryeh were out with the Fleet somewhere. Reuven, last he’d heard from him, was fighting in Kiryas Yoel. He had no idea where Miriam was, and that worried him most of all. She’d always been a good girl. It wasn’t like her not to write.
Hummm, went the drive.
One cycle every nine hundred and eighty milliseconds. Steady as programmed. Just barely ahead of the clipper’s own wake, as it had been for days.
He’d been lucky as far as things went, thought Commodore Tellman. Of all the married crew aboard, only himself and Goldeh hadn’t had to sit shiva for a child. Yet.
The worst part was, a man couldn’t even sit shiva properly in this goddamned mess. Aaron, the Wildcatter Master Trainer assigned to the Tellman clippers for this crazy mission’s train-up, had gotten the dreaded Ministry of Defense email the day before his first class.
A curse on war, and a curse upon the cat-vermin who’d started this one. They all belonged in Gehinnom for it. And that’s exactly where the lot of them would go. The Navy would send every one of the hatultsim straight there, down to the last kitten. Reserve Commodore Moshe Tellman and Mishpocha Tellman’s clippers would do their part to help.
Hummm, went the Dalia’s drive.
There was a flash on the navigation display. Long jump wavefront. A surveyor, popping out only six light-seconds below-forward and off to port from his formation.
Crazy Wildcatters. Navigators born, by the grace of Hashem. Loony as a drunken centipede, every single one of them. He couldn’t even imagine the level of skill it had taken to pull off that jump, or the level of meshuggeh a man needed to be to try it in the first place. Betsalel had come out of the control pod looking like death warmed over, Wildcatter train-up or no. Goldeh had sent him straight to quarters for five days. And that was three weeks ago.
The message unfolded on the comms display as the Wildcatter swung by. Head Cat was making better progress up the gradient than expected, it seemed. Big Boss was moving up the date of the final dance. Moving it up big time. Starting the bloodiest war in six centuries wasn’t enough for those goddamned furry scum, it seemed. They had to ruin the holiday, too.
“Not a problem,” thought Moshe Tellman as he dialed up the drive cycles on the auto-helmsman. One thing a clipper could do was go fast.
Hummm, went the Dalia’s drive.
There was a distant whooshing of pumps as coolant surged through extending hull radiators.
Hummm.
* * *
X leaned back in his chair, drumming his fingers on the edge of the desk. He liked this office much better than the other one, he reflected. Here, behind the mass concrete and earth block wall that had replaced Polytechnic University’s perimeter berm, President Sanchez had no power. At its thinnest, on top, the Wall was twelve meters thick. The ditch before it was a full-fledged moat, sixteen meters wide and eight deep, so deep that special precautions had been needed during construction because the crews had breached the toxic line. Were it not for the concrete that lined it, the moat would be full of poisonous, metal-rich water.
There were only two drawbridges, to accommodate the two pedestrian gates and one small vehicular one. Those had been built for the convenience of staff who worked at the clinic just outside campus, and at the newly-built cargo terminal down by the river. When the weather was good, quite a few preferred to walk. For those who didn’t, there were shuttle buses.
A series of cranes on the southern edge of campus handled bulk cargo from the terminal, stretching across six hundred meters of clear space to grab security-screened containers and haul them inside the Wall. Most travel in and out took place by aircar.
The Zin could take this place in a day, via air assault supported by precision fires, but even they would find such an operation surprisingly costly. As for Sanchez’s thugs…
The one time the Yellow Rats had tried to test the informal agreement between the President and the Minister of Infrastructure by coming onto campus, they’d lost. Badly. The loopholes and embrasures that studded the Wall’s grim, sloping gray face weren’t there for decoration, and neither were the radars and crew-served lasers the Campus Police had emplaced atop the prewar high-rise dormitories. The pair of Yellow Rat aircars that had tried to invade Polytechnic University airspace without permission that day had found out right quick why doing so was a supremely bad idea.
Sanchez had, of course, denied all knowledge afterward. But the aggrieved Minister had still responded by abandoning the Ministry of Infrastructure building within the Government House complex, and moving all of his operations down to the fortress where he lived.
He would have done so anyway, sooner or later, mused X. If Sanchez hadn’t been so predictable in giving him his excuse, Doctor Weinberger would have invented another. It wasn’t just that the Minister and the President, to put it mildly, disliked each other. The University was the Ministry. The Ministry was the University. That might not be true lower down, but at the top, the two were indistinguishable.
Polytechnic University was at the heart of all things that the Ministry did. Its professors commanded the Ministry’s directorates. Its foremost Senior Lecturers were the Ministry’s all-powerful Planetary Auditors. From its campus set out the Ministry’s flying teams of techno-wizards to repair, organize and put back into operation all manner of things across four continents, pole to pole, and to its campus the Reconstruction Teams returned to rest, and sharpen their skills. Everyone within the Wall was now a Ministry employee.
Even from the simple standpoint of efficiency, it was only a matter of time before Doctor Weinberger would have simply stopped bothering with the Government House building. All the important things within the Ministry happened right here, on campus.
Within these walls, Doctor Weinberger reigned supreme. And that supremacy gave X near-absolute freedom of action. At his level of power within the Ministry, almost any Ministry asset could, if necessary, be surreptitiously put at the disposal of his Organization. It was only a matter of effort.
X had worked long and hard to arrange a proper High Holidays gift for Colonel Weismann, and now he had just the thing. It would be some time before the gift would reach the colonel. His people’s High Holidays would be long past. But no matter. The value of the gift would not suffer from the inevitable delay. Anything but.
The question, thought X, was where to put the mill. It couldn’t be too far from Colonel Weismann’s regular haunts, but it couldn’t be too close, either. Things had to look natural.
Didn’t Aruanā District have some light industry, before the war? He distinctly remembered that there was something textile-related.
X brought up a map.
Yes, his memory had not deceived him. Rio Oro Textiles, a small facility way up in the north, just west of the Paraibuna district border. Product of General Palmer’s harebrained industry decentralization schemes. They’d survived after the Revolution by going into the specialty fiber and nanite market; tough stuff for sports, construction and industrial applications. They’d even made some military-grade nanites, mostly for export.
That far out in the boonies, all the equipment was probably still intact. It likely just needed a few repairs, and some replacement parts. The road to Aruanā could be cleared fast enough. From Aruanā, the trucks would turn southeast, toward Highway One, and quickly deliver the goods to any police garrison along and/or north of the highway. It was a perfectly natural, reasonable distribution scheme given the circumstances. There were probably even raw materials already in place, to serve as starter stock for the initial run of ponchos. Production could begin while the road was still being cleared.
Ponchos were a vital item, needed urgently by the Federal Police. In the event of failure, all of the Ministry’s decisions would be readily explicable and rationally justifiable. Even in the worst case scenario, investigation would lead nowhere. Nothing incriminating would be attributable to anyone within the Ministry’s top echelons, least o
f all himself.
Rio Oro was a perfect place. Absolutely perfect.
“Get me the Director of Textiles,” said X, bringing up his Receptionist. It was time for the opening act.
A split-second later he was looking at the director’s reciprocal AI.
“The Director is indisposed, sir,” protested the machine.
“Override,” snapped X.
He damned well knew that the Director was indisposed. He was always indisposed this time of day, and X knew exactly what indisposed him. That’s why he was calling now, and not at some other time.
The Director of Textile and Light Industry was available for him. He’d bloody better be.
The space above X’s desk filled with the face of Director Menendez’s human receptionist.
“Señor...” started the girl.
“Get me your boss,” interrupted X, glowering like a thunderhead about to burst forth lightning. “Now.”
The girl swallowed in terror. Her lips were quivering.
“Y-yes, sir,” she stuttered, “One second.”
She’d lied. Her Director appeared in two.
Ignacio Menendez grunted, shifting slightly forward in his chair. He had his jacket off. His shirt was misbuttoned. X’s desk speaker emitted a muted thump and a furtive feminine giggle.
He’d stuffed the girl under the desk, thought X. Stupid ninny didn’t understand that the last thing her boss needed right now was the distraction of what she was doing down there.
At least Menendez didn’t force them. The last girl who’d dared to say no to Pillár had found herself bitch-slapped into next Tuesday, choked half unconscious and bent over his desk against her will.
He’d forced her to suck him clean afterward, and wipe her own blood and snot off his desk with her torn blouse. Then he’d literally booted her out of his office naked and bleeding, tossing after the remnants of her uniform. Not even out into Reception, where all the rest of his girls sat. That, apparently, would not have been punishment enough. He’d dragged the poor thing by the hair, screaming, through there, and thrown her out onto the working floor. Whether by deliberate aim or by accident, the tip of his boot had penetrated as he kicked, thoroughly ruining what he had already severely damaged. The girl had left a trail of bloody droplets down nine flights of stairs and out the building door.
She was lucky Pillár hadn’t thrown her out his office window, thought X. Perhaps he’d been concerned about the bother of having to replace the glass.
Before the war, Professor Pillár had been known universally as a good and gentle man. The kind who wouldn’t hurt a fly. Still was, on the half-Sundays he carved out of his hundred-hour workweek for the sake of his wife and daughter.
Power really brought out the worst in people. Power and war. Last October, no one on campus had known the real Doctor Pillár. Perhaps not even Doctor Pillár.
What a difference a year made, mused X. This time last year, girls had resented having to wear the boring old Polytechnic University uniform. The antique, militaristic look, the stone-age fabrics full of natural fibers and primitive polymers, the annoying buttons and zippers that took the place of modern morphable elements, all had been targeted for endless ridicule on student social media. Not a year had passed in the last few decades before the war without the Student Senate tabling yet another motion to finally rid the campus of the last traces of primitive militarism, or at least to replace the antique campus textile mill and tailor’s shop with shiny modern technology. The natural leather boots had been especially despised, almost as much as the table of officially permitted campus hairstyles.
Today, that same signature combination of calf-length, navy blue pleated skirt, white blouse and crested, cutaway navy blue jacket, was an object of envy. Wearing it without authorization was a serious crime. Flat-heeled, pointy-toed leather boots were all the rage, for those few who could obtain them. And so were the buns and ponytails and bob cuts of the Polytechnic University Hairstyle Guide. Every young woman in San Angelo wanted to be a Poly Girl, or at least to look like one.
Poly Girls got University rations. They got protection from the Minister of Infrastructure. They were issued everything. Even underwear, stockings and hose. A pair of brand-new pantyhose cost six thousand pesos on the black market, enough to feed a family of four for a week.
Poly Girls didn’t go hungry. Poly Girls didn’t get bloody blisters on their hands from backbreaking manual labor. Poly Girls’ woolen sweaters, cloaks and berets were warm and dry in the winter rain. Poly Girls had roofs over their heads, and well-armed men to guard them. Nobody gang raped Poly Girls in the streets, hunted them in labor sweeps, won and lost them at playing cards and dice, or bought and sold them in the markets like cattle. The Zin didn’t eat Poly Girls. Poly Girls didn’t die in epidemics. Some of them even had weapons. Everyone knew that the ones with the little rectangular patches above their rank tabs all had stilettos up their sleeves, and laser derringers in their pockets. They would use them in a heartbeat. And it was legal.
Starving and terrorized, looking in from the outside, ordinary Angelenos assumed that the Poly Girls’ lives were as perfect as ordinary people’s lives could get under the Zin occupation. And in some ways that was even true, mused X. In some ways. For in the hermetic little world of the Polytechnic University campus, this yesteryear’s bastion of Liberal Progressivism, Poly Girls now held nothing as dear as they held being formally owned.
There was no doubt whatsoever that the profound social changes within the walls of Poly were being driven by design. What was emerging here was a wholly new society, a society whose values differed shockingly from the values of the society it was intended to replace. The rate and magnitude of social change on campus were unprecedented. Nothing like it had been seen since the end of the Wreckall War.
It wasn’t just the Collapse. It wasn’t just the Siege. It wasn’t just the Counterattack or its aftermath. It wasn’t just Sanchez or the alien occupation or the needs of reconstruction. It wasn’t just the fact that, on prewar Paradise and pretty much everywhere else in the civilized universe at any time over the past three to four hundred years, nine out of ten men walking around campus would have been institutionalized immediately and medicated to the gills.
Those were all factors, consequences, obstacles turned tools, problems turned opportunities. Most weren’t anticipated. Some had been predicted as inevitably flowing from others. None had been seen as desirable. None had been deliberately sought. But now that they were here, they were being used. There was a Design.
Behind the changes stood the iron will of a man who cared as little for the fate of individuals who had to be crushed in order to effect them as Hernan Pillár did for the fate of rocks that had to be crushed in order to make his metals and ceramics. He was a lifelong, professional revolutionary, a man who had once gone by the disconcerting moniker “Lucir”. He had a vision of a Brave New World. Regardless of cost, he would spur Poly forward in his chosen direction until his vision became reality. And after Poly, the planet. When the time came, Sanchez wouldn’t be able to stand in his way, and neither would the Zin. No one ever had. Just ask General Palmer.
Doctor Weinberger’s methods were as rational as they were brutal.
At first, there was a common opinion among the faculty that what he was doing was dictated by circumstance. In the heat of the Siege, it would have been madness to punish, say, Hernan Pillár or Miguel Garcia, for rape. Who would make the cannon without Pillár? Who would treat the wounded without Garcia? The idea made sense at the time.
But now it was clear that things went much farther than that. That became clear to the observant by March, and by April fourth, when he’d hung Doctor Armagnier, it would have taken a true idiot not to comprehend.
It was all by design. The epidemic of rape after the Siege had ended. The inaction of the Campus Police. The twelve thousand Refugees brought onto campus within eight weeks as part of the Dean’s Accelerated Studies program, and their distribution
by gender and age. The things that went on in the Refugee barracks. The whispers among the Survivor girls:
“Find a man, honey. Find a man, it’s the only way to be safe! Don’t be a selfish bitch, take a friend with you, there aren’t enough boys to go ‘round! We all have to stick together in this. We stuck together during the Siege and we made it, we can make it through this, too. We just have to stick together, us girls! Our boys have weapons. They kept us safe from the Looters, and they’ll protect us from all those A-tabbers, too! Find a man!”
And the boys did have weapons. The Dean had issued them weapons. Easy to carry, lethal weapons, first thing right off the bat. Daggers and revolvers at the close of the Siege, and then laser pistols to replace the revolvers. They could handle them, they’d fought non-stop for a month. In fact, they were mandatory wear, same as pants.
The boys all got the same short speech from their officers:
“You’re all members of the Militia, gentlemen, whether up on the Wall or not. None of you is off duty, ever. Campus security is everyone’s job, not just the cops’. Don’t leave your room without ‘em!”
But not the girls. The girls didn’t get any weapons.
And if a man wanted a girl, and there wasn’t another man around to protect her… The A-tabbers weren’t the only ones who raped. Not by a longshot. If a Survivor shot an A-tabber over a girl, the Campus Police would shake his hand. If a Survivor shot another Survivor, they’d investigate, and mostly let him go. It only happened a couple-three times, anyway. The Survivors all knew who had which girl. But if a girl came in with a complaint and she didn’t have a man…
They’d find the rapist, if he was an A-tabber and the girl was not. Sure as winter rain they would. They’d find him and he’d get switched bloody at the next Sunday Assembly. But afterward he would still be on campus, and now he’d want revenge. The police would investigate a beating. But they rarely made arrests.